by James Lutaaya

Created on: June 09, 2008   Last Updated: August 13, 2008

THE ICTR, A CONTINUED ADULTERATION OF RWANDA'S NAIVETY

Very often eulogies are given after a person has passed on or an institution has come to end, in the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (hereafter referred to as the ICTR), exception needs to be taken. How Rwanda trusted the International Community again after it deserted them during the genocide is beyond human comprehension. As stated in my last article, the then UN Secretary General after the genocide confessed that the UN should have done more to try and avert the genocide and the international community was guilty of sins of omission'. Nations like America, Britain, France and Belgium who could have also easily stopped the blood shed stood by as they had no vested economic interests in Rwanda and evacuated their nationals when the violence escalated, callously leaving a nation in urgent need to drown further.

Shockingly, like an amnesia sufferer, in September 1994, the new government requested that the United Nations establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to adjudicate the crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that had been committed during the genocide. The UN Security Council, trying to redeem themselves, accepted the invitation of the Rwandese government and established the ICTR to prosecute those responsible as the National Prosecutions at this point seemed impossible since the Rwandese Justice system had been destroyed.

However, like a bad dream, the Rwandese woke up, smelled the coffee', and wanted out, but International Criminal law does not give you that liberty easily; as the government of Uganda is finding out with International Criminal Court's case against Kony. From the onset, there were several conflicts between the Rwandese government and the ICTR on the workings of the Tribunal. The location of the Tribunal was the immediate one. Whilst Rwanda wanted the Tribunal in Kigali to bring justice closer to the victims, the ICTR preferred Arusha as it feared that the tribunal would not be free from political pressure in post genocide Rwanda had that been the case. They strongly felt that the appearance of justice and fairness, in particular complete impartiality and objectivity, required that trial proceedings be held in a neutral country. As such, Arusha, an upcoming town prior to East African Parliament and especially the Tribunal benefited from Tanzania's political stability and took all the trappings of the UN establishment. Its transformation

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